Family PICKINGS: Ko Yong Hee was born in June in 1952 in Osaka, Japan. She was the daughter of a Korean-Japanese judomaster professional wrestler, Ko T’ae-mun. The Ko family repatriated to the DPRK via Wonsan in 1960. Ko Yong Hee joined the Mansudae Art Troupe in the early 1970s. She met Kim Jong Il around 1974. Ko Yong Hee was a popular North Korean dancer.
Ko Young Hee was Kim Jong Il’s second mistress. In official propaganda she was called “Respected Mother”
Ko-Yong-hee and Kim Jong Il had two sons, Kim Jong Chol, 1981, who, according to his father, “was no good as a successor because he was too much like a girl” and Kim Jong Un, 1983. They also had a daughter, Kim Yeo Jong, 1989. Ko-Yong-hee was reportedly Kim Jong il’s favorite wife who could prepare his favorite foods. She also did not tolerate his mood swings and fits of depression.
Officially she died of breast cancer in August 2004.
Kim Jong Un vows NO CHANGE policy – the dynasty is promising "final victory"
North Korea issued two stamps after 14 days of mourning has ended
“We declare solemnly and confidently that the foolish politicians around the world, including the puppet group in South Korea, should not expect any change from us,” said the statement. “We will never deal with the traitor group of South Korea’s Lee Myung-bak.” The statement was carried by the Korean Central News Agency, the regime’s official mouthpiece to the outside world.
Hostile posture and typical bellicose attitude towards the outside world with a characteristically common threat to punish President Lee Myung-bak of South Korea for his “unforgivable sins” I read as a sign to rally its military and people behind the new leader KIM JONG UN who is believed to be in his late 20s.
“Don’t expect change from me!”was the slogan of the dynastic rulers. “The Eternal President” KIM IL SUNG used it, his son “My Dear Leader” KIM JONG IL ensured continuity with no change in policy and “The Great Successor” KIM JONG UN is promising “final victory” and presses North Koreans to remain faithful to the dynastic rule.
I register the confrontational behavior towards the external world as a tactic to extort large shipments of humanitarian aid from South Korea and USA.
Kim Jong Un during a memorial service for his father. On our extensive trip through North Korea, everybody I met or saw in the cities or in the countryside were slim, haggard or emaciated
KIM JONG UN inherits an extensive network of prison gulags. He faces a widespread food crisis, starvation,
an impoverished population and is confronted with an enormous fuel shortage and extensive daily powercuts all over the country, in tourist locations as well.
Traveling through North Korea, we met electricity shortages every day in the cities and in the countryside. Fuel shortage was visible everywhere, no gas stations along the highways or in the cities.
When our driver went to get gas in Pyongyang, we were dropped on the roadside at the outskirts together with our two guides and he disappeared for twenty minutes. My questions to our two “permanent guides”, why we could not stay in the car, were not answered.
Girl reading a book – she said hello
As Ursula stayed with our two guides talking to keep them busy I managed to cut myself loose and slipped away to the nearby river to see if I could make contact with some people. Away from my two guides I met this girl reading a book, she was a little shy but nevertheless she said hello to me.
“facade” PICKINGS from my DPRK DIARY 11.–21. April 2011
Pyongyang is a FACADE city. The Yanggakdo Hotel where we stay, is built to impress – like much of Pyongyang’s architecture. Oversize constructions in DPRK are a sign of quality while the inside of the monumental buildings is often less striking.
Our room is on 37th floor, facing the Taedong river with the city panorama. On my elevator rides I realize that a couple of the lower floors have the corridor lights turned off day and night. I find out that on these floors only “insiders” live like Russian circus artists, gymnasts, tourist guides (they always have to stay in the same hotel like their foreign guests). To my big surprise the button for the 5th floor is missing in the elevator. I try to stop and enter the 5th floor but I can’t.
No button for the 5th floor
Breakfast is very convenient to exchange information with fellow travelers. I’m told that the 5th floor is occupied by the secret service monitoring the hotel. My question, why I can only get Chinese CCTV channels and NHK international from Japan in our room but not one North Korean TV program which I would like to watch, nobody can answer. Even our guides seem to be puzzled because they get North Korean channels but no NHK international in their rooms. It turns out that tourist floors are assigned different channels than “insider” floors…
It doesn’t matter where we stay, we cannot leave the hotel on our own. Tourist Travel DPRK has no program for “Strolling, Walking, Hiking unattended”. Travelers who stayed at the Koryo Hotel in the center of Pyongyang were not allowed to leave the lobby on their own. When they tried, the receptionist immediately called their guide who came down from his room and stopped them.
The Yanggakdo Hotel is on a little island. We couldn’t cross the bridge on our own to go downtown or to the nearby railway station. To keep us from doing that our guide told us the following story: Not long ago a Chinese visitor had crossed the bridge, gone to the railway station and taken the train. He ended up in the province, hopelessly lost because he couldn’t communicate with the locals. As he didn’t find his way back he panicked. The travel agency had to pick up the completely confused Chinese tourist.
It was quite obvious that the story was imaginary. Restrictions are so rigorous that not even a Chinese can leave the Yanggakdo Hotel, cross the bridge and go downtown on his own. To enter the railway station without a guide and ticket in hand is even more impossible. To buy a ticket – no tourist can get Won, the North Korean currency – is a mission impossible without the DPRK travel agency’s permission. Nevertheless if that Chinese would have overcome these insurmountable obstacles the conductor on the train would have definitely called the police and had arrested him.
“quality” PICKINGS from my DPRK DIARY 11.–21. April 2011
Entering the resort – Lonely as the lamp post...
The Ryonggang Hot Spring is located 40 km outside of Nampho. The compound consists of 12 houses. There are no other hotels between Pyongyang and Kaesong.
DDR-style design – We live on the ground floor – Our two “permanent" guides are in the background
The Ryonggang Hot Spring resort looks like DDR-design. It is guarded by soldiers with machine guns around the clock. It is closed off to the outside world as well as to those who are inside. Nobody can enter, nobody can leave without permission and guide.
It has been a famous spa of the former Union of Socialist Soviet Republics. The vacation compound in the woods offered complete seclusion where Communist Party Members of the former Soviet Empire, from Ukraine to Kazakhstan, from Poland to Cuba, could enjoy themselves in total privacy.
It has special services like floor heating in the bedroom, a bathtub with hot water from the hot spring for three hours in the afternoon and two hours in the morning…
Reception area
The reception area was huge, well, that was my impression when I entered the main building. But soon I had to adjust my perception of space in this “otherworldly“ environment.
Billiard room
After dinner we went to the billiard room – it looked like the first class waiting room of a small town railway station. One could still feel the activity of decades ago.
Going to the bar, another – abandoned – enormous empty space brings up the fantasy – I can’t resist it – that, year by year, train loads of vodka and kaviar must have passed through this exclusive resort which served former communist apparatchiks from all over the world.
Pomp in the UDSSR has always been expressed by size.
Pomp in the UDSSR has always been expressed in size and kilos. Oversized constructions carried the nimbus of “Excellence“ and “Quality“.
Dining room
In that respect, our dining room was of “very high quality“. It was super huge and only the two of us were experiencing the remote and odd luxury in the woods of this once exclusive resort.
Bedroom with floor heating from the hot spring
Times have changed? I guess they have – in some respect. Nowadays, modern communists expect more comfort.
The game is over. Now we tourists pay for the upkeep.
Hot water for three hours in the afternoon and from 0600-0800 in the morning
Lips and Lipstick, local guide, agricultural university, Wonsan
cynical PICKINGS from my NORTH KOREAN DIARY 11.–21. April 2011
Quite a lady
North Korean lips and Chinese lipstick, Kaesong City
Hairdresser at a cooperative farm, Wonsang
Local guide, Wonsan
Traveling through DPRK I come to the conclusion that, first, without Chinese help a revolt is impossible and, second, China does not lend it’s hand for an uprising. Mobility in DPRK is strictly controlled, districts, cities, villages, cooperatives are hermetically cut off, people have only shovels… indoctrination is very effective. After a disastrous currency devaluation, most people feel a lot poorer now. Hardship stifles protest.
My impression is that the Chinese don’t want to topple KIM JONG IL’S dictatorship for cynical and pragmatic reasons. They may fear that, without his ruthless grip on power, it could provoke a serious revolt and North Korea could rush inadvertently towards reunification with South Korea. A reunited Korea under Seoul leadership and allied to the US, highly developed, democratic and western oriented would make the “Chinese Teeth feel very cold“ indeed.
The Chinese tactic and strategy, it seems, is to keep the KIM’S in power, their paranoia alive and DPRK’s economy in endless decline.
They don’t want to get unpleasant things – like KIM JONG IL’S dictatorship – over and done with. In fact they detest a collapse of the system. They seem to prefer to draw out the agony: “Besser ein Schrecken ohne Ende, als ein Ende mit Schrecken”.
The end will come but in endless and invisible small steps, unnoticeably. Then the Kim regime will come under Chinese patronage. They will help but at a price. North Korea will move into China’s orbit. China is already now buttering up the North Korean consumer – not South Korea and the West. They will keep the KIM JONG IL regime afloat and secure KIM JONG UN’S succession
Lips and Lipstick, local guide, cooperative farm, Wonsan area
The Chinese want to make sure that their North Korean lips will have Chinese make-up on. China, it seems, pays great attention that North Korean and Chinese economies will be close-knit. Beauty products are a forerunner of this strategy, the lipstick a symbol of it.
Public kiosk (not private) in Pyongyang, street vendor selling water at KIM IL SUNG'S 99th birthday – She was not allowed to sell me a glass of syrup, my “permanent" guide said NO.
For the Chinese leadership governments, dictatorships come and go. Their goal is to penetrate systems and political structures by means of production, exert influence and strengthen ties at all levels through market domination.
North Korea will become a satellite of China. This is not what the KIMS want. But there is no alternative to the regime survival of the KIM family.
Primatologist, our local guide at the showcase maternity hospital in Pyongyang
live PICKINGS from my NORTH KOREAN DIARY 11.–21. April 2011
...only a few running cars
Highways like frontline airstrips
Highway roadside traffic
The NO!…NO’S! of our two guides are an everyday occurrence. I don’t work with hidden movie or photo cameras, my shooting activity is open but my focus I keep obscured by not looking through the finder.
Shooting from the hip
Since the guides don’t allow stops on the highway or in cities without prior permission from the central travel office in Pyongyang I shoot from the hip.
Army road block
I take photos or movie from all types of angles. My “luck“ is that roads and highways are often in poor condition and we roll by comfortably at 40-60 km, perfect to take snapshots.
Highway bikers - much more common than cars
Just as regular as pedestrians and bikes are oxen carts on the highway.
Man and ox - regular highway traffic
Broken down trucks on the roadside I see sometimes more often than cars driving.
Head transport on the highway
Driving overland on the highway from Pyongyang to Wonsan on the East coast, a distance of about 200 km, I count 25 oncoming cars while on our side I see 11 vehicles in need of repair.
The most modern trucks I have seen in North Korea
A NO! NO! shot. North Korean soldiers wait for the blow-out to be fixed
Hitch-hikers in the tunnels are a special experience.
Hitch-hikers are extremely rare
The NO!…NO’S! are an attempt to hide the harsh living conditions of the North Koreans and erase them from the travelers eye.
Crossing the railway tracks, our driver has to slow down... - In the background behind the biker people are walking on the tracks. This is very common specially in the morning and evening hours. Rail tracks offer the shortest link to the next destination. Trains ran not very often and when they approach the people on the tracks they honk early.
Our guides allowed the driver to make an unplanned stop only in a very remote area but even there Tung Hui followed me, stood in front of my camera to prevent me from taking pictures.
Woman transporting coal to the city
As a western tour operator, stationed in Beijing and in the North Korean tourist business for over 10 years, said to me: “We all know that the view KIM JONG IL’S dictatorship imposes on us does not reflect everyday life in DPRK.”
Panmunjon - Tomb of lost hope - View to the South Korean side
North Korean war photo from the Armistice Talks Hall at the DMZ
North Korean propaganda officer “welcomes“ Ursula at KPA post
CHEJU-honeymoon-dream PICKINGS from my NORTH KOREAN DIARY 11.–21. April 2011
The wishful thinking of reunification obscures the fact that North and South Korea are light-years apart. Social and economic realities of the two Koreas’ are differently cycle-controlled. But both seem to have adopted the rule: If reunification is not working, stick to it anyhow!
We join a group of Chinese tourists - In the background the entrance to the Demilitarized Zone DMZ
Arriving at the KPA post just outside the DMZ we join a group of Chinese tourists. We were picked up by a soldier in his thirties – in charge of propaganda – who took us to the Armistice Talks Hall where negotiations were held from 1951 till the signing of the final ceasefire accord on 27 July 1953.
At the Armistice Talks Hall we got a lecture on the Korean war. The Chinese group applauded and agreed with the remarks of our North Korean soldier.
The Korean nation is divided along the 38th parallel into North and South Korea
As we had experienced before, Chinese tourists had more leeway and could move more freely which rubbed off on us two. Whatever the Chinese were allowed to do at the 38th parallel we could do also: we got more photo opportunities, were allowed to visit to the toilet in the official border building finding out that the toilets didn’t work because of electricity shortage.
I asked the North Korean army man when he would like to marry. He said “after reunification, maybe next year“. He thought it would not take longer than 2 to 3 years at the most. He would then go on honeymoon to the famous Cheju island in the South Korean sea.
North Koreans’ believe that KIM IL SUNG liberated them and that South Korea is still occupied by the US army up to now.
Ursula in front of the North Korean version of the final armistice treaty which was signed on 27 July 1953. The text goes like this: “On July 27 1953, the American imperialists got down on their knees in front of the heroic North Korean people and signed here the ceasefire for the war they had provoked.“
To them, the Americans were – and still are – the aggressor who started the war but finally had to succumb to the North Korean forces. Of the two Koreas’ they believe, it is them who live in a free and democratic state since 1953.
The countryside at the 38th parallel
The eerily soundless environment oft he DMZ was only interrupted by our lively Chinese tourist group.
North Korean propaganda officer elaborates on Panmunjon DMZ with an illustration that totally belittles the death-zone and the extremely heavy fortified border strip which makes escaping impossible
It’s a unique experience to see things from a North Korean perspective. The population is hermetically cut of from all outside influence and can not imagine how different the world is outside of North Korea. In their opinion it is just a matter of time until the American aggressor is defeated and the capitalist system of South Korea collapses. It’s like somebody kicking the can down the road but the can is getting heavier, the distortions more difficult to hide. The danger of a total collapse of the systems shows itself in the military posturing and in the harsh Gulag style atmosphere within DPRK.
chinese PICKINGS from my NORTH KOREAN DIARY 11.–21. April 2011
It pays off to walk behind a Chinese. This invaluable lesson I learned in DPRK. Chinese in groups are a friendly bunch, they laugh, are loud, say hello and often ask to make a photo with you. They care less about restrictions, take pictures we are told not to make and walk around more freely. Moving behind a Chinese or a Chinese group of travelers is like moving your boat behind an icebreaker in the Arctic Zone. Chinese seem to be “naturally“ hearing impaired, easy-going and not responsive to every whim of their guides.
I quickly understood that if I wanted to make contact with local North Koreans I had to hang behind my guides at least 20m – and behave like a Chinese.
red star PICKINGS from my NORTH KOREAN DIARY 11.–21. April 2011
Film City – "rea"l street cleaners
The film sites have a 1930’s Chinese street, a Japanese street, a US corner, a South Korean quarter and a bizarre selection of European architecture. They have three focuses: against the American Aggressor, the anti-Japanese struggle and the fight against the occupied capitalist and decadent South Korea. Watch out for signs of Massage Parlors that illustrate their South Korean compatriots’ decadence.
KIM IL SUNG visited Cinema City about 20 times in his lifetime to give on-the-spot advice to North Korean filmmakers. KIM JONG IL has a passion for cinema, thanks to his lifelong interest, the film industry is well financed. He dropped in over 600 times to give direction to the film studios.
Film City – American street corner, against the US-aggressor
But the North Korean filmmakers could not satisfy his vision. When their performance did not improve, KIM JONG IL didn’t hesitate to take other steps, orchestrated by himself.
Film City – Lactogen – Prepared in Austr...
Massage Parlors that illustrate their South Korean compatriots' decadence
Choe Eun-hui, a South Korean movie actress, was the first being kidnapped in HongKong by KIM JONG IL’S secret agents in 1978. Her husband, the South Korean film director Shin Sang-ko, who flew immediately from Seoul to Hongkong to look for his wife, was soon after kidnapped and brought to Pyongyang too. The fanatic movie buff KIM JONG IL, who likes Rambo and James Bond movies, wanted the South Korean film director to make “good“ movies for North Korea. After almost five years in the Gulag for trying to escape twice, Shin Sang-ko made several movies. One of them is probably the most famous North Korean film called “Pulgasari“, a socialist version of “Godzilla“, though the North Koreans deny that he was involved.
In 1986, the couple were given the permission to travel for the first time abroad. They went to a film festival in Vienna and though they were followed by North Korean secret agents they managed to enter the US embassy and asked for asylum eight years after having been abducted.
Film City – Bizarre selection of European architecture
sweat bead PICKINGS from my NORTH KOREAN DIARY 11.–21. April 2011
There is no trekking on your own like: “We will be back in 4 hours“. We need a permit and a guide for everything.
...no trekking on your own in DPRK
Jürg is contemplating...
Ursula walking on granite
The hills of Mt Myoyang are steep rugged rocks and if we wander from the path it’s wilderness all around us. Deep ravines cut into huge elephant type rock formations we cross the deep ravines on small swing bridges.
The Hyangsan hotel is nearby
The Hyangsan, a 15-storey hotel with a fake waterfall and plastic deer in the lobby is for tourists and special guests who visit the gift shrine-temple-like warehouses of KIM IL SUNG and his son KIM YONG IL. On the top floor, it has a revolving restaurant, a North Korean hotel tradition.
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